Joint Sender/Receiver Rate Control Algorithm for Scalable Video Streaming

In this paper we firstly improve a virtual network buffer model (VB), based on which we propose a joint sender/receiver rate control algorithm for scalable video streaming. A transmission rate is determined by a rate control algorithm at the sender which employs the program clock reference (PCR) embedded in the video streams to work in a refined way. An over-boundary playback rate adjustment mechanism based on proportional-integral (PI) controller is performed at the receiver to maximize the visual quality of the displayed video according to the receiver buffer occupancy. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can reduce the overflow and underflow of the sender and receiver buffer, and achieve better video quality and quality smoothness than traditional rate control algorithms.